“Food for me has always been about two things: people and place,” chef Matt Jennings says. “The best food in the world speaks to relationships and it speaks to a sense of place. If you can achieve that through the food that you make, then as a chef you’re doing your job as a storyteller.”

Jennings’s debut cookbook, Homegrown (Artisan Books), honours his native New England. It’s a celebration of the history, regions and flavours that make the area unique. Food-producing landscapes are at its heart, with chapters devoted to Dairy, Ocean, Farm, Garden and Orchard, and Forest.

Chef Matt Jennings shares his love for New England cuisine in Homegrown, his debut cookbook.Artisan Books

An avid cookbook reader, Jennings says it was important for him to write a book that would be used well and often. “I really want food to be fun. I want to get people cooking,” he says. Rather than offering a “cheffy” collection, he hopes Homegrown will “get spilled on, dusted with flour, and handed down to the next generation.”

The four-time James Beard Award nominee is renowned for the inventive fare at his farm-to-table Boston restaurant, Townsman. The book, Jennings says, maintains the ethos of his restaurant in that “it promotes ingredients as the most important element in cooking.”

“The food that hits the plate can only be as good as the ingredients that you begin with. So (highlighting the importance of) paying particular attention to sourcing your products… in a way that’s more approachable for the home cook,” he adds.

Known for its Atlantic coastline, regions define New England, Jennings says. It’s home to a vibrant community of producers, from artisan cheesemakers and farmers, to vintners and brewers. In Homegrown, he confronts common misconceptions – “that the food of New England is plain at best, boring at worst” – head-on.

“New England cuisine is ever-evolving. In Boston, (I’m influenced) by the different cultures that come through the city as a gateway to the U.S. Embracing … what that adds to the fabric of food is a huge part of what I do,” he says.

“It might take some people by surprise because they … expect chowder, fish and chips, and pork and beans. Of which all of that stuff is in the book but there are also nuances to all of it that are constantly evolving.”

His baked-in-a-can brown bread calls for doenjang (Korean soybean paste). And his cashew brittle scented with shichimi tōgarashi, a Japanese mixture of seven spices.

Regional ingredients such as bluefish appear in variations on treasured family recipes. Jennings’s nouveau clam chowder – complete with a briny hit of seaweed and shards of squid ink crackers – is followed by his mother’s classic “chowdah.”

“A lot of my food hearkens back to food that I either grew up with or that influenced me and doing fresh spins on that,” he says. “It comes from a place that’s a little bit more personal. It’s driven by family, tradition and culture.”

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An inventive take on a classic: Chef Matt Jennings makes New England cuisine more approachable